Author: Healthcare Propulsion Staff

Conifer Health Solutions, the revenue cycle business of for-profit Tenet Healthcare, plans to permanently lay off 1,037 employees as a result of its breakup with CommonSpirit Health, according to a mandatory notice filing with the Texas Workforce Commission.  The layoffs are set to begin on Nov. 2, according to the WARN filing, and involve workers who report to Tenet’s corporate headquarters in Dallas. Affected workers are not represented by a union and do not have any bumping rights. “Conifer is taking this action due to restructuring and technology initiatives related to, among other things, no longer providing services to CommonSpirit…

More than three-quarters of donated lungs offered for transplantation are not used, according to the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, contributing to a chronic shortage of organs for patients with end-stage lung disease. Researchers hope a new medical device incorporating monitoring technology they recently developed could ultimately help change that by continuously measuring key indicators of lung function while donor organs are being maintained outside the body. Continuous monitoring of important health indicators, or biomarkers, could provide transplant teams with far more timely and detailed information than the hourly laboratory tests they now rely on in clinical…

At the launch of On Your Side, external, a mental health toolkit created by the Prince of Wales and the Royal Foundation, BBC Sport’s Nesta McGregor asks sporting stars, ‘how has sport helped your mental health?’Dan Burn opens up about mental health awareness Source Link

An international team of researchers led by the University Hospital and University of Bonn, as well as the universities of Edinburgh, Basel and Pennsylvania, has identified a previously unrecognized form of inherited retinal degeneration caused by a specific variant in the EFEMP1 gene. The disease primarily affects the peripheral retina and the rod photoreceptors responsible for vision in dim light and darkness. Importantly, rod function may already be severely impaired while the retina still appears largely normal on clinical examination. The results of the study have now been published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology. Working across centers in Edinburgh, Basel,…

Increasing numbers of Australian women are using a blood test to assess their fertility, but new research suggests it may not provide the answers many are looking for. A study led by Flinders University and published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found requests by GPs for anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) tests increased more than 13-fold between 2011 and 2021, despite growing evidence that the test cannot predict whether a woman will become pregnant naturally – not now or in the future. AMH is often marketed as a fertility test or “egg count” because it measures ovarian reserve,…

For over 60 years, scientists have debated a basic structural question about cone photoreceptors, the cells that let vertebrates see color: are their light-sensing disk membranes closed off inside the cell, or are they open to the extracellular space? In non-mammalian species, the answer is clear – cone disk membranes typically stay continuous with the surrounding plasma membrane and are therefore open. Whether the same holds true in mammals, and especially primates, has remained unresolved. A new study, led by Dr. David S. Williams, professor of ophthalmology and neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, in collaboration…

Nephrotic syndrome is caused when the filtering system in the kidneys is damaged, allowing large amounts of protein to leak into the urine. It is usually treated with steroids, but in some cases steroids alone are insufficient, and long-term steroid use has serious side effects. Some patients develop a difficult-to-treat form of the disease which returns when the steroid dose is reduced. For these patients, the intravenous drug rituximab (RTX) has been found to be effective. RTX removes B cells from the blood, a type of immune cell thought to contribute to the disease. Now, researchers from Nagoya University in Japan…

The White House announced Thursday that it plans to issue $500 refunds to close to a million people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans. The administration said in a fact sheet that the refunds come from “overcharges” collected in the Biden administration through user fees intended to fund the operation of the federal insurance exchange, Healthcare.gov. The refunds will be issued to those who do not receive premium premium assistance across the 30 states that use the federal exchange. “As a result, the Biden Administration accumulated a significant surplus of funds that were not used to benefit the Americans who…

As UnitedHealth Group continues to chart its turnaround from a challenging 2025, the company’s top brass is pulling back the curtain on those efforts at its healthcare services unit, Optum Health. The healthcare giant posted disastrous results in the first quarter of 2025, which sent shares tumbling, and Optum Health was one of the major contributing factors to that earnings report. Care activity spiked, particularly in the Medicare population, which was a drag on both Optum as well as UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage business. At the Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference on Wednesday, Optum Health CEO Krista Nelson spotlighted some of the…

A common liver condition thought to be harmless could be dramatically increasing the risk of heart disease, kidney failure and premature death, according to a new review led by University of Manchester and Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust researchers. Fatty liver disease, they find, has been overlooked in current approaches to assessing cardiometabolic health, despite growing evidence that it can play a central role in facilitating damage across different organs. The condition which affects up to one in three adults worldwide and known technically as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), is already one of the world’s fastest-growing health…